Ripples Back Home as a Black Republican Retires

By JOHN W. FOUNTAIN

Published: July 5, 2002

EUFAULA, Okla., July 3—
J. C. Watts Jr. Avenue runs east of Main Street to the other side of the railroad tracks.

It has become known here as the street where crack dealers conduct business. It is a long way from Washington, but it is where Representative Julius Caesar Watts Jr.'s roots can be traced to a red brick house where he grew up.

Despite breaking with tradition in this solidly Democratic town to become a Republican, he is still embraced here.

So it was perhaps no surprise that news this week that Mr. Watts, the lone black Republican in Congress, would not seek a fifth term caused some sadness among people, black and white, in his hometown.

''I don't like it,'' said J. M. Bailey, 72, who is white and owns J. M.'s Restaurant, where, he said, Mr. Watts once worked when he was a boy. ''I'm going to talk to him, too,'' added Mr. Bailey, who said he had hoped Mr. Watts would seek a higher office.

But there was also some hostility here, particularly among some African-Americans, over Mr. Watts's conservatism and his alignment with the Republican Party. In this town of 2,600, the rule of partisan politics is simple and plain: You are born and bred a Democrat.

''He should never have started,'' said Virginia Murrell, 58, when asked how she felt about Mr. Watts's intention to retire. Standing in a laundry near J. C. Watts Jr. Avenue, she added that she had always voted a straight Democratic ticket.

''You be up there for eight years and you can't do nothing for your own hometown?'' said Ms. Murrell, who was born in Eufaula. ''I can't see nothing that he's done over here.''

In Mr. Watts's defense, he represents the Fourth Congressional District of Oklahoma, which does not include Eufaula. Even so, Mayor Bill Day, a Democrat, said that Mr. Watts had helped the city get federal grants and that having him in Washington was akin to having a second congressman representing Eufaula.

Perry Anderson, 69, Mr. Watts's high school basketball coach, said he believed Mr. Watts's critics were being unfair.

''What they don't realize is J. C. did not represent this district,'' said Mr. Anderson, who is an American Indian. ''He did what he could.''

''Anytime you have racism, you're going to have a certain amount of jealousy involved because he has come above everyone else. I'm sure there are some of them who thought that J. C. shouldn't have been congressman.''

First elected in 1994, Mr. Watts, 44, is chairman of the House Republican Conference and the fourth-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. Some people have speculated that he has been unhappy recently with the message of the party and with the Bush administration's effort to kill the Crusader artillery program, which was to have been assembled in his district. He was also passed over to lead a new committee set up to shepherd the proposed Homeland Security Department through the House.

While most here said they had no sense of how Mr. Watts was treated by Republicans, they added that they believed something other than his contention that he wanted to spend more time with his family was at the root of his decision to retire.

''I think he's a little bit discouraged,'' said Lorine Hutton, 51, who was born in Eufaula and has known Mr. Watts since he was a child. ''I feel like there's more behind it.''

''By him being a black man,'' Ms. Hutton added, ''the only one in there and the highest, don't you know he had pressure?''

Mr. Watts, an ordained Baptist minister and a former professional football player, has not said publicly what he intends to do after leaving Congress. But he has been quoted in the past saying that someday he might like to retire to farming in Eufaula, where he once wowed crowds at Ironhead Stadium as a high school football star.

The street named in his honor -- a cracked narrow road that leads past Mr. Watts's childhood home to Eufaula Lake -- runs mainly through the section of town where most of Eufaula's approximately 200 blacks live, many of them in wooden frame houses that lie in disrepair, the paint peeling like dead skin.

There are few amenities in the black section of town. There is only one black-owned place to eat, a tiny barbecue restaurant near the lake, which is run by the congressman's brother, Lawrence Watts, 52.

Mr. Watts said his brother's Republican affiliation had kept many people from seeing who he really is.

''You've got to know the person; I know what's in here,'' Mr. Watts said, placing his hand over his heart. ''J. C. has got something that they all should be proud of,'' he added. ''He never forgot home.''

People here talk about the congressman's frequent visits to Eufaula over the years to speak at public functions, how he mentions Eufaula in speeches far away from home and how he is still the same ''J. C.,'' as everyone calls him: personable, friendly, down to earth. Whatever his politics, many here say the honest, hard-working boy who grew up the fifth of six children born to Buddy and Helen Watts still holds their respect.

''I love J. C. Watts,'' said Luthermae Hutton, 69, who is black and a lifelong Democrat. ''He's a good old guy.'' She cut Mr. Watts's picture out of the newspaper after he went to Congress, framed it and hung it on a wall.

''He's all right with me,'' added her daughter, Lorine Hutton, sitting in the kitchen inside their aging cinderblock home. ''A political party doesn't make a person. It's what you are in the beginning.''

Photos: Main Street in Eufaula, Okla., hometown of Representative J. C. Watts Jr., who is retiring. ''J. C. has got something that they all should be proud of,'' said Lawrence Watts, his brother. ''He never forgot home.'' (Photographs by Stephen Pingry for The New York Times) Map of Oklahoma highlighting Eufaula and Fourth Congressional District: Representative Watts's hometown lies outside his district.